I told in an earlier chapter of the American Red Cross canteen at Bassens, just across the Gironde from Bordeaux. It is enough to add here and now that this American-builded port with its mile-long Yankee timber pier at which seven great ships might be berthed simultaneously, discharging or loading cargoes, never justified its worth half so much as in the days after the armistice. Thomas Kane's coffee attained a new perfection while Miss Susanne Wills, the Chicago woman who was directress of the canteen on the pier, and her fellow workers made renewed efforts to see that the boys that passed through the canteen had every conceivable comfort—and then some others. I, myself, spent a half day questioning them as to these. The verdict to the questionings was unanimous. It generally came in the form of a grin or a nod of the head, sometimes merely in a pointing gesture to the crimson-crossed comfort bag, that the big and blushing doughboy carried hung upon his wrist.
For the sick boy, going homeward bound from all the ports, very special comfort provisions were made—and rightly so. All of these last passed through the Red Cross infirmaries on the embarkation docks. As each went over the gangway he was questioned as to his equipment. If he was short a mess kit or a cup, a fork, a knife, a spoon or a blanket, the deficiency was promptly met; in addition to which each boy was given a pair of flannel pajamas and the inevitable comfort bag, with its toothbrush, tooth paste, wash cloth, bar of soap, and two packages of cigarettes. Books and magazines also went upon each troopship, while Red Cross nurses accompanied the boys on to the ships and saw them safely settled in the hospital wards.
No mere cataloging of the work of our Red Cross in the embarkation ports can ever really begin to tell the story of the fullness of its service there. Charts of organization, details of operations, pictures of the surroundings go just so far, but never quite far enough to tell of the heart interest that really makes service anywhere and everywhere. Such service the American Red Cross rendered all across the face of France—and nowhere with more strength and enthusiasm than in those final moments of the doughboy which awaited him before his start home. Have I not already told you that our Red Cross over there was not a triumph of organization—or anything like it? It was a big job—and with big mistakes. But the bigness of the things accomplished so far outweighed the mistakes that they can well be forgotten; the tremendous net result of real achievement set down immutably and indisputably as a real triumph of our American individualism.
CHAPTER XII
THE GIRL WHO WENT TO WAR
On the ship that bore me from New York to Europe in the first week of December, 1918, there were many war workers—and of many sorts and varieties. We had men and women of the Y. M. C. A., of the Y. W. C. A., of the Jewish Welfare Board, of the Knights of Columbus—and twenty-five women of the American Red Cross. And so, in the close-thrown intimacy of shipboard, one had abundant opportunity to study this personnel at rather short range, and the fact that our ship, which had been builded for South African traffic rather than for that of the North Atlantic, nearly foundered in mid ocean only served to increase the opportunity.
There were women war workers of nearly every age and variety in that motley ship's company. There were school-teachers—one from Portland, Maine, and another from Portland, Oregon—stenographers, clerks, women of real social distinction, professional women, including a well-known actress or two, and girls so recently out of finishing school or college that they had not yet attained their full places in the sun. Few of them had known one another before they had embarked upon the ship; there was a certain haziness of understanding in many of their minds as to the exact work that was to be allotted to them overseas. A large percentage of the women, in fact, had never before crossed the Atlantic; a goodly number had not even seen salt water before this voyage. Yet with all this uncertainty there was no timidity—no, not even when the great December storm arose, and with the fullness of its fury lashed itself into a hurricane the like of which our captain, who had crossed the ocean a hundred times or more, had not seen. And when the fury of this storm had crashed in the cabin windows, had torn the wheelhouse away, had set the stout ship awash and the passengers to bailing, the courage and serenity of these American women remained undisturbed. They suffered great personal discomforts, yet complained not. And with our national felicity for an emergency organization—that sort of organization really is part and parcel of our individualism—relieved the steward's crew at night and cooked and served the Sabbath supper.